However, if one of you is preferring to wait – whether for personal comfort, reasons of faith or any other reason – then it’s better to establish your expectations early on.Many people are less likely to stick around, without if you get the sense that you’re not necessarily on the same page.

Straight talk: there are two phrases that a woman can say that will instill ball-shrinking terror in the heart of every man.

The first is “We need to talk.” The second is “Where do you think this relationship is going?

” It’s the dreaded “Defining The Relationship” talk… The DTR talk has achieved an almost mythical level of terror amongst people – especially men, because it almost always comes at the worst possible moment, and suddenly you have to make decisions that will affect you for the rest of your relationship.

For many men, it represents a massive, possibly undesirable, change in the nature of your relationship with this person. As much as it would be nice to have a handy rule of thumb like “three weeks after you start sleeping together” or a concrete date, every relationship is different and, as a result, the timing will be different as well.

Even if you’re actively One of the first and most common questions is simply “when should you have the defining the relationship” talk? However, as with navigating the tricky world of gift giving there some guidelines as to whether to have it sooner or later. Dating is a cumulative experience; the more often you see each other, the more likely that you’re going to want to have the DTR convo sooner rather than later.

When you’re seeing each other once or twice a week at the most – usually just on weekends – then there is a lower level of implied intimacy and emotional investment than a couple that sees each other three to four times a week.

Seeing each other more often than that tends to mean you’re more into each other and you’re headed towards something more involved than a fuck-buddy relationship where you’re both enjoying the sex but you’re not interested in anything more.

In fact, if you’ve been finding that you’re seeing each other more and more often lately, that’s often a sign that you’re both becoming more and more interested in one another and invested in your relationship together – a sign that you should consider discussing just where you think the relationship is going. If you’re getting together twice or three times a week on your lunch break, but not spending extended periods of time together, then the DTR conversation can be pushed back in the relationship timeline.

Similarly, a couple that only sees each other in short, intense bursts in between long stretches of non-contact (long-distance relationships and out-of-town hook-ups, for example) is probably going to want to have the DTR sooner – the intensity of that time together, coupled with the length of time spent when you together tends to necessitate making sure everyone is on the same page.